The Friends of the Professional Car Society is the official website of the Professional Car Society, Inc. (Society). Our membership is primarily dues paying members of the Society; however, it is not a requirement that you belong to the Society to participate in our website.
The professional car is loosely defined as a custom bodied vehicle based on passenger car styling and used in the funeral, rescue, or livery services. Such vehicles may be hearses, flower cars, service cars, ambulances, limousines, or cars which are specially built to combine two or more of these different functions-combination hearse-ambulances, sedan-ambulances, or invalid coaches.
The Society was founded in 1976 to encourage the preservation of such vehicles. At that time, many of these vehicles had no established classes in multi-marquee antique car organizations. The Society's growth since that time has helped to establish the position of the professional car in more clubs and shows, and has served to preserve many of these vehicles for future collectors to restore and enjoy.

General Discussion ForumFor the general discussion of Professional Cars.

Couldn't find another established mixed procar thread noninclusive of fleet shots. Please move them if there is one.

Vaguely recall 1947 Texas City Disaster being brought up before but not seeing these shots. May have been a previous board. These captures are from the mass funeral service for victims held in Memorial Park.

Photos from Rescuing Texas History 2006 collection.

Last shot left original size to see how many coaches can be identified. It was marked taken the day of the explosion, April 16, 1947.

The Following 14 Users Say Thank You to Attila Bethlenfalvy For This Useful Post:

I read somewhere that in order to conserve metal for the war effort, they used smaller plates and stacked the prefixes to save space.

Doug: That's interesting...never heard that one. I thought maybe "FT" was a Code for (Funeral Truck) and "HE" was for a (Hearse). I know in later years in some midwest states, "FT" often stood for a (Farm Truck). THX-MM

The Following User Says Thank You to Mike McDonald For This Useful Post: